RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS AT BUBASTIS. 165 
siderable influence in the Hyksos invasion in Egypt. It was the 
beginning of a great tidal wave which swept across Western Asia 
and burst in the lower provinces of Egypt. The discoveries which 
M. Naville has made seem thoroughly to confirm that opinion. 
The head which is now in the British Museum I regard as one 
of its greatest treasures, and the importance of which we cannot 
too highly estimate. I think we shall find that it is a monument 
which will take its place side by side with those remarkable statues 
found by M. de Sarzec in South Chaldea. The more one studies 
the early civilisation of Chaldea, the more one is convinced that 
there was an Egyptian influence in Babylonia at the time of Gudea 
and the Kings of Sergul, and I am persuaded it will be found that 
there was a very early and close intercourse between the Baby- 
lonian and Egyptian people at that period. One point that M. 
Naville has referred to is extremely interesting, and that is, the fact 
that those early kings fought in Sinai for the possession of the 
copper mines and for the possession of the stone quarries, and of this 
there seems to be no doubt, as out of a number of Assyriologists 
there are only two who hesitate to identify the land of Maggan, of 
which he spoke, with the Sinaitic inscriptions. It is called the 
land of the Turquoise, which we know was found there in ancient 
times, and we know that the turquoise is always associated with 
copper, and that copper is found there, and these facts are confirmed 
by the discoveries of Professor Hull in his investigations into the 
Sinaitic peninsula referred to by him in a paper read before this 
Institute.* It was from this region that the stone for the statues I 
referred to came, and it was in this region of Sinai that the contact 
between the two civilisations took place. Then there is another 
point in this paper of particular interest, not only to Hg yptologists, 
but to all students of the history of Western Asia, and that is a 
point which M. Naville has hardly emphasised as much as he might 
have; viz., the fact of the certainly isolated position which the 
Eishron people held in Egypt. Though they were in power at 
court at the time of the Hyksos, and during the period when the 
Semites were in power in the Delta, yet they came very little 
into contact with the thoroughly highly-educated Kg oyptians, 
and this accounts in a great measure for the little Hgyptian 
influence that has been found in the Pentateuch, and the discovery 
is made still more important to us in another point of view. What 
* Transactions, vol. xxi. p. 11. 
